But you will. I can see it in you,Ashwalker. The guilt you’ve been carrying since before she was born. The weight of every pyre you lit without rites. You want to pay for what you’ve done—you’ve always wanted to pay. You became a death warden because you couldn’t save your brother, and you’ve been punishing yourself ever since.
Drokhar flinches. The blade wavers for the first time.
I try to push against the King’s presence—to reclaim my throat, my voice, my will. But it’s like trying to push back an ocean with bare hands. The King is vast and ancient and utterly certain of its purpose, and I am one woman who has spent her life letting the dead flow through her.
This is what I trained for. This is the logical conclusion of everything I’ve been.
No.
The thought surfaces from somewhere deep—deeper than the King’s presence, deeper than my fear, deeper than the years of conditioning that taught me to be a passive channel for other people’s grief.
No. I am not a tool. I am not a weapon. I am not a bridge for someone else’s purpose.
The King feels my resistance. Laughs.
You think you can fight me? You, who have spent your entire life opening yourself to spirits? You, whose purpose has always been to let the dead speak through you?
My purpose has been to help them find peace.
I force the thought toward it, sharp and certain.
Not to give them vengeance. Not to become a weapon for their rage. Peace. That’s what I offer. And you—you don’t want peace. You want to hurt the living the way the living hurt you.
The King’s presence contracts. For one moment—one blessed, terrifying moment—I feel it falter.
Then it surges back, harder than before.
I have waited three centuries for a mourning witch powerful enough to serve as my anchor.
The voice is no longer amused. No longer patient.
I will not wait another three.
The floor beneath my feet cracks.
Not metaphorically—literally. The stone splits with a sound like breaking bones, fissures racing outward from where I’m standing. Through the gaps I see darkness—not the darkness of cellars or crypts, but the absolute darkness of the space between life and death. The realm the Gravetide King has built from centuries of unfinished grief, from mass graves left unmarked and bodies burned without rites.
Cold air rushes up from the cracks, carrying the smell of old blood and forgotten battlefields.
Hands burst through the broken floor.
Not random corpses—these are the King’s honor guard. Soldiers who have been dead so long they’ve forgotten what life felt like, their armor fused to their flesh, their faces smooth and expressionless as masks. They wear the insignia of a dozen different armies, their rusted weapons still clutched in grips that death couldn’t break.
They seize my ankles before I can scream.
The grip is impossibly strong—not the desperate clutching of newly risen revenants, but the deliberate strength of creatures that have been waiting for this moment. Waiting for the King to call them. Waiting to drag me down into the realm where the forgotten dead hold court.
“ARADYA!”
Drokhar lunges for me, his blade already swinging toward the hands that grip me. The enchanted iron bites through one wrist, severing the hand from its arm, but another immediately takes its place. There are too many of them—a dozen, two dozen—clawing up from the broken stone, their empty eye sockets fixed on the woman their King has claimed.
They’re pulling me down into the stone, into the darkness, into the realm where the Gravetide King waits on its throne of fused bodies.
Our fingers brush.
For one heartbeat, I feel his hand close around mine—rough and warm and desperate, those scarred fingers gripping mine with all the strength he possesses. The mark blazes between us, his and mine crying out for each other across the growing distance, burning so bright the honor guard recoils for a moment.
But only a moment.